A Light From the Darkness
by ReavansMask
Summary: In a final attempt to atone for the mistakes of her past, Erin Shepard chose to synthesize organic and synthetic life in the hopes of creating lasting peace. Nothing, though, happened as she expected it to: not for the galaxy, not for the Reapers, and definitely not for her. Female Shepard/Liara T'Soni.
1. Chapter 1

**I've noticed that virtually all of the continuation fiction for Mass Effect uses either the Destroy ending, or a modified version of it. (EDI/Geth live, etc) While this all is good and well, and indeed my previous stories have used the canonical Destroy ending, I thought it might be an interesting change to instead use a modified version of the Synthesis ending to take things in a different direction. This will be a somewhat darker story than my other ones, but I hope that Shepard/Liara fans, of whom I am unapologetically one, (as well as others) will still end up finding it enjoyable.**

* * *

The battle is not going well. All around Liara T'Soni, the oranges and reds of the enemy's weapons flash in the darkness of the valley, greatly outnumbering the blue lights of the asari biotics trying to hold them at bay. Her people are doing their best but the combined krogan and batarian forces are advancing in spite of them, the sheer weight of their numbers combined with their ruthless determination to press on despite their losses gradually overwhelming the commandos.

She hurls a singularity at the nearest cluster of onrushing infantry, catching four batarians in the gravitational field. As they float through the smoke-filled air, she aims her Hurricane, coldly picking off her targets one by one, finishing off the last of them with a biotic blast before pausing to reload. Despite her best efforts though, it's like trying to empty the ocean with a glass, fresh waves of enemies pouring over a nearby ridge, slowed but not stopped by the fire her allies are laying down.

_Additional hostile forces detected in northwest quadrant. Reassessing optimal course of action. Probability of survival without withdrawal from present location…_

She tries her best to push aside the part of her mind running the calculations. In the weeks since the Crucible fired, she hasn't yet managed to seamlessly integrate these new abilities into her thought processes, and right now, she can't afford the distraction.

"Nysis, Rellia, try to hold off those krogan coming from the northwest. The rest of you, fall back with me. We will regroup near the trucks to the south." She's never thought of herself as a leader, but right now, there's no one else. Not since the Crucible, not since…

"And what an excellent job I have done leading these asari," she chides herself silently. Almost half of her forces are already dead or routed, and their situation is desperate. It's not over yet though. If they can just hold out a little bit longer, perhaps Javik will be able to get here with reinforcements before they're completely wiped out.

She never sees the blast. Preoccupied with coordinating their retreat, the only warning she has is a truncated scream from one of the other asari as the shell lands in their midst. A wave of heat and force washes over her like a hellish wind, smashing through her barriers and tossing her body through the air like a rag doll before slamming her violently into the broken earth.

Moments later, her blue eyes flutter open, blood flowing warm from her head into them, further blurring her already doubled vision. Her mouth opens to call out to any other nearby survivors, but the breath has been knocked from her lungs, her cracked ribs sending daggers of pain through her chest when she tries to speak.

_Injury Report. Significant structural damage to torso, additional assessments forthcoming. Recommend ending participation in combat engagement._

If only that were possible. As she fumbles clumsily with the medi-gel dispenser, three sets of heavy footsteps thunder towards her, their mocking voices distorted by the ringing in her ears.

"You're not gonna believe this, Gaton, but I think we just nailed Shepard's little blue bitch."

Gaton licks his lips, his long tongue running obscenely over sharp teeth. "Our lucky day. Wreav's gonna want to take his time with her."

Never. She has little chance against the three krogan, not in her condition, but whatever happens, these brutes will not take her alive. Ignoring the burning in her chest, she reaches for her submachine gun. A tear falls down her blood-stained cheek as she whispers, "Erin, I will see you soon."

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** I've decided to try something new: previews at the end of chapters. Hey, if it's good enough for TV…**

** Next Time: An unexpected awakening in an unfamiliar place.**


	2. Chapter 2

Several weeks earlier…

When she awakes in darkness, the last thing she can remember is the light. A light that had suffused into every corner of her being and merged with all that she was. A light that took her apart piece by piece and…

And that was Erin Shepard's death. It's supposed to be over. So where the fuck is she now? The agonizing pain she had been in on the Citadel is gone, replaced with a pleasant sleepiness. And yet, as she lies wherever this is, her limbs are heavy, as if constrained. Moreover, she feels different, her own body unfamiliar to her in ways she can't identify.

Is this heaven? Hell? She never believed in either, had laughed when Ashley talked about it shortly before her death on Virmire. Hell was here, the product of the barbarous things people did to each other. She had found that out as a girl on Earth and on Torfan, she showed the galaxy just how well she'd learned the lesson. For years, she was a killer in a world that she believed didn't deserve better.

Liara had given her hope it could be otherwise. The asari had believed in her despite all the shitty things she'd done, had risked everything to save her when damn near everyone else had given Shepard up for dead. Erin's tried to become a better woman, to sometimes do the right thing and not always the expedient one, but she's made so many mistakes. There's so much blood on her hands. Could she be anything but damned? Is even saving the galaxy enough to atone?

_Internal assessment completed. No physical damage detected. Presence of sedatives confirmed._

The voice seems to be inside her head, but it doesn't sound like her. It's clinical and mechanical; not exactly how she'd imagine a supernatural speaking. If this isn't the afterlife, then what? She had tried her best to make her peace, to say her goodbyes, if only in her own mind. What does she do now? Jesus, she can't process all of this. She needs to focus on where she is; one step at a time. She's better at problem-solving than philosophy anyway.

All right, she can't see anything and she can barely move. Why? Her eyes feel all right, so she's probably in darkness.

_Adjusting optics. Engaging low-light vision._

There's a tingling in her face and suddenly she can see. Not well; everything looks as if she was using night-vision lenses, but well enough. There's some kind of clear barrier preventing her from rising and beyond that, a ceiling. She can also feel tubes stuck into her arms when she tries to move them, probably the delivery mechanism for the sedatives.

"Fuck it, we do this the hard way." Taking a deep breath, she tries to summon her biotics. Her injuries on the Citadel had prevented her from doing so, but she should be fine now.

As the energy starts to build inside Shepard, a searing agony shoots through her body, radiating outward from her biotics nodes. It's a pain she hasn't felt in 15 years, not since she first used biotics and her system hadn't acclimated to the strains, and it catches her by surprise, causing her to lose her concentration as the power she was trying to summon slips away.

_Biotic pathways opened. Re-routing nervous system functions._

There's that voice again. What the hell is it? Gritting her teeth, she tries again. This time, the burning is minimal, the energy erupting out from her in a brilliant nova. The force of the blast shatters whatever container had imprisoned her and wrenches the tubes out of her arms as it pushes her off the table and to the ground. She lands hard, cutting herself on the plastic shards now littering the floor, and even as she sits up, the harsh glare of fluorescent lights floods the room, blinding her for a moment until, seemingly of their own accord, her eyes return to normal.

Starring down, she can finally see herself. She's naked, and there are several small cuts and punctures, but neither of those things are what disturbs her. Beneath the surface of her skin, fine green lines, circuits of light and power are winding their way through her.

Could this be a sim like the one she experienced on Rannoch? No, no simulation is advanced enough that you can't tell the difference between it and reality, at least none she knows of, and she's tried the best combat training programs. If it's real than the voice… suddenly it makes sense. Synthesis. The voice must really be a part of her, some program that's incorporated into her mind now. The Catalyst had said that all sentient organic life would be merged with inorganic elements and vise versa. The only catch is, she was supposed to die to bring that about.

_Two life-forms detected. Human baseline. One male, one female._

Before she can contemplate the mystery any more deeply, the knowledge of their presence penetrates her awareness. She doesn't understand how she knows the people are coming. She can't see or hear anything, but she just knows, the same way she knows where her feet are, even though she's not looking at them.

Quickly, she surveys the room. It has the feel of a medical facility, with hard, polished floors, white walls, and those stark lights. There are two more distant tables with containers sitting atop them, and a fourth, closer by, that's empty. Over against a wall, there's a computer consoling currently flashing with a red alert. Other than that, there's nothing, and particularly no weapon beyond plastic shards, so she crouches behind the table she had been on and waits for the new arrivals.

"…can't be awake. It has to be some kind of computer glitch. There's no mind in there to revive." She hears the whoosh of a door sliding open followed by the sound of footsteps entering the room.

"Are you sure, Mary? After everything else that's happened, I wouldn't be surprised if…. Fuck me, the pod's broken. Where is it?"

"There's a blood trail."

Shit. She looks down at her cut leg. She never was any good at stealth.

"We're not taking any chances after last time. Kill it." She hears the tell-tale sound of guns warming up followed by the newcomers moving together around the table. They're amateurs; pros would be flanking her, but they've got guns and bad intentions while she's naked and unarmed so she does the only thing she can: she attacks.

As they round the corner, she biotically jumps, aiming herself at the leading human, a tall, brown-haired man as it turns out. The shockwave generated on her arrival catches both him and the shorter blonde woman in the blast radius, it's force slamming them into the walls with a snapping sound that leaves little doubt as to their fates.

Looking down at their broken bodies, she shakes her head. Five minutes since she woke up and already, she's taking lives again. And then she sees it on each of the two corpse's collars, a mark she knows all too well: the logo of Cerberus.

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**Next Time: Shepard solves some of the mysteries surrounding her rebirth, but further questions are raised and more trouble finds her.**


	3. Chapter 3

A Cerberus facility. For a wild moment, Shepard imagines that somehow, they've replicated the Lazarus Project but that doesn't make any sense. She's smashed Cerberus to pieces; they have neither the resources nor the motive to bring her back again. Besides, after she leapt into the beam on the Citadel, there shouldn't have been enough of her left to bury let alone revive.

And then she thinks of the other tubes. There's a building sense of unease in her gut as she walks over to the nearest table. Looking down is almost like gazing into a mirror, a version of her own narrow face visible through the dusky glass, topped by her bright red hair. The eyes are closed though, and there's no sign of intelligence or awareness in the body laying in front of her.

Erin runs her hands over herself. The hard points beneath her skin where the Cerberus cybernetics should be are as yielding as any other flesh. The scars she's acquired since her revival are absent, and her hands are no longer calloused. There's no sign at all that this body has been marked by life.

A clone? Is that what she is? A copy of the real Shepard, just like the bitch who'd tried to steal her ship. For a despairing instant, it seems like the logical conclusion. And yet…

A clone wouldn't remember that incident and she remembers everything. The impact of the imposter's biotic jump against her barriers. The way the clone screamed, the sound so eerily familiar, as she fell to her death. Liara's lips soft against hers as they celebrated their victory back in her reclaimed cabin. She can recall her whole life, even the parts she wishes she could forget, right up until the final moments on the Citadel when she made her choice. But she came out of one of the tubes. She has to be another of the back-ups Cerberus created. Except that she can't be.

Her head hurts thinking about it. She's no doctor, no scientist. Miranda would have known more but she's gone, killed by Kai Leng. Mordin. That's who she needs to talk to. And Liara… if they join, her lover will know for certain if she's herself. Fuck, she hasn't even had time to consider where Liara might be, what might have happened to the _Normandy_ after she fired the Crucible. She takes a deep breath. If she starts letting herself go down that road, she'll go crazy and right now she can't afford that.

Returning to the corpses, she bends down, picking up one of their pistols. It's a lighter weapon than she'd prefer. Ideally, she'd have her plasma shotgun, but to be fair, ideally she'd have Liara, a bottle of excellent scotch, and a feather bed, so the pistol will have to do for now. The clothes don't look like they'll fit her and they're too covered in blood to be much of a disguise and too flimsy to offer any real protection. She'll have to rely on her biotics to shield her for now.

"Fred? Mary? Is the situation under control. Please report. Over." A comm unit on the male corpse crackles to life but she ignores it. She's not fooling whoever this is into thinking she's Fred, and she's better off letting Cerberus wonder what happened to them than confirm that they've got an intruder on the loose. Still, she'd better get moving before reinforcements arrive to find out what happened to these two.

The corridor outside is narrow, with the claustrophobic feel of a starship or small space station. There's a small sign on the door she exists through that reads: "Room 208: Lazarus Project Surplus Storage." She shakes her head. Apparently, she's surplus.

Striding down the hallway, she checks the labels on the doors she encounters. "Janitorial Supplies." Not helpful. "Armory." Extremely promising, but sealed, and she doesn't have her omni-tool to hack the lock. "Project Golem Prototypes." Who the hell knows what that is. "Staff Quarters." That could work.

_One life-form detected. Human baseline. Female._

Once more, she can feel the person inside, knows that she's positioned some distance from the entrance. The door slides open automatically when she pauses in front of it, revealing a young, short-haired brunette in a tank top and gym shorts sitting on one of about a dozen bunks.

"I bet Joker's got vids that start this way," she laughs to herself. A naked redhead with a gun bursting in on a frightened, scantily clad victim… Sorry, Jeff, that's not how this one's gonna play out.

The woman looks up at the sound of the door opening, her jaw dropping and her big almond eyes going wide with shock when she sees the gun, and also, Erin notes, glowing with the same green light that she saw in the other two Cerberus members.

Not exactly a battle-hardened soldier, this one. Indeed, with her flustered expression and her brown eyes she reminds Erin a bit of Samantha Traynor, the assistant she had been smart enough not to sleep with. Kelly Chambers had been a mistake. Erin had been so angry and hurt after her visit to Illium and she'd thought that screwing Kelly would help her to move on from Liara. Instead, the unsatisfying experience had convinced her to try to repair her relationship with the asari.

"Who are… how did you… are you?", the woman in front of her stutters.

"Yes. Commander Shepard. Which means you'll never make it if you go for a weapon or scream for help."

"I won't." She's telling the truth. It's in her eyes.

"Good. Now what's your name?"

"A…A…Amelia. Amelia Syner."

"Okay Amelia, find me some clothes that will fit."

The young woman rummages through several bunks before finding a grey Cerberus jumpsuit that seems like it might be about the right size.

"Set it down next to me and then take a seat at the back of the room. I'm gonna get dressed now. Try and resist the urge to do something stupid." She'll have to put the gun down and her hands will be temporarily full but she's pretty sure her reputation will keep Amelia too frightened to try anything and a minute later Erin is clothed with the pistol back in her grip.

"Now, I have a few questions for you and then I'll be going. Where are we?"

The prospect of getting out of the situation alive seems to brighten Amelia's demeanor. "This is a Cerberus storage facility in the Kypladon System." Kypladon… Cyone… There are fuel reactors there she had to stop the Reapers from destroying. Shit, there aren't a lot of places Shepard hasn't fought at this point. "We're sort of a dumping ground really, for stuff they don't need but don't want to get rid of."

"What do you know about the Lazarus room?"

"Not much. It's these clones of Shepard, I mean of you, but they're supposed to be brain-dead, just there for spare parts."

"Brain-dead?" Certainly the body she saw looked that way.

"Yeah, they did it to them just before I got here. Some rogue agent had broken in, killed a bunch of people and made off with one of the clones. After that, the bosses wanted to make sure it wouldn't happen again. But I guess, uh, it didn't work. Or did it?"

An excellent question. Clearly, Amelia doesn't have a clue what happened here and Erin has little time before somebody shows up looking for her. "How do I get off this station?"

"There's, um, there's a hanger with a shuttle that can get you to Cyone. Or the relay. But the relay isn't working. There was this green light and everything got weird and afterwards we picked up comm chatter that it was broken."

Shit. She had forgotten that was going to happen. Cyone it is then. She gets directions to the hanger and then realizes she has one more question. "Amelia. When I came in, you were surprised. Didn't you detect me coming?"

The woman looks confused. "What do you mean by that?"

"Never mind." Another mystery for a later time. "Get on your knees." Amelia hesitates for a second but the icy look in Erin's green eyes compels her downwards.

"Are you… are you going to kill me."

Once, she would not have hesitated to do so. The woman belongs to Cerberus. She could raise an alarm. But she's just some hapless clerk and Erin doesn't want to be that person. Not anymore. The butt of the gun crashes into Amelia's head and the smaller woman slumps down, unconscious. She'll have a hell of headache when she wakes up but she'll live. As Erin turns to leave, she curses silently to herself. "I really am fucking trying, Liara."

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**Next Time: A dangerous escape and a moment of quiet reflection.**


	4. Chapter 4

_Three human baseline males detected._

As Erin steps away from the unconscious woman at her feet, that automatic knowledge springs once more into her head. Why does she have it and Amelia doesn't? Sure, she has a better trained sense of spatial awareness, but she's also been awake about 10 minutes; hardly enough time to have figured out more than people who've been dealing with this transformation for however long. Besides, the information just comes to her; she doesn't have to look for it.

Based on her sense of their location, the newcomers are in the corridor moving in and out of some of the rooms, presumably looking for her. Once she feels them leave the hallway again, she steps out of the staff quarters and positions herself with a view of the exit to the ration storage room they're currently in.

Moments later, the three Cerberus troopers spill back out through the doorway. Though they're clad in assault armor and carrying rifles, their formation is undisciplined and their awareness lousy, taking an instant they don't have to see her there. Raising her arm and steeling her mind, she prepares her strongest attack, a biotic flare she learned while fighting alongside Aria T'Loak.

_Biotic capabilities still being optimized. Current level: 82% Probability of successful energy channel: 91%_

Screw it, she's had worse odds. She unleashes the flare.

_Temporary system overload. Rerouting biotic pathways._

Electric jolts of pain stagger her body as a massive burst of energy leaps from her hand, landing in the midst of the guards. For long seconds, her head fills with sparks, disorienting her, but as clarity returns, she can see that all three soldiers are down, killed by the attack. A headache is a small price to pay she supposes. Replacing her pistol with an assault rifle, she makes her way to the elevator.

A short elevator ride to the third floor later, and she's starring at a large, sleek shuttle. Quad thrusters, missile launchers, mass accelerator canons… Cerberus may have been a gang of murderous, indoctrinated terrorists, but at least they left behind nice stuff.

_One human baseline male detected._

"Who's there?" The voice coming from the other side of the ship is thin and reedy, seeming annoyed at the intrusion. "Is the damn security alert over yet? What was it this time, some…"

His voice trails off as Erin steps into view, leveling her Harrier at the technician. "Don't move."

"Gah! What? Who?"

Christ, Amelia was more right than she knew. This place really is where Cerberus warehoused stuff it didn't need, people right along with the technology. "Look, Daniel," she reads the name off the tag on his grey and black jumpsuit, "I'm taking this shuttle out of here. You can either help me…" She lets the threat hang unspoken in the air and the frightened tech jumps to comply.

His omni-tool unlocks the ship and the tall, thin young man precedes her on-board. "Can you unlock the hanger from here?"

"Yes, sir… I mean ma'am… I mean…"

"Just do it." The bay doors open and as the thrusters begin to fire up, a thought occurs to Shepard. "What are the external defenses like?"

"Oh, them. Well, there's a few missile batteries, but they have somewhat limited range. We just need to get 5,000 meters out and we'll be safe."

"What do you think your superiors will do if they know I'm on board?"

Daniel's forehead, already moist, seems to be awash in sweat as he contemplates the likely result of that eventuality. "Uh, probably shoot at us."

"Well then, Daniel, it seems we're in this together."

As they begin to exit the hanger, the shuttle's radio crackles to life. "Control to unidentified shuttle pilot, please report. Explain why you've opened the hanger doors."

Shepard glares silently at Daniel, and the Cerberus technician swallows hard and replies, "Control, Engineer Ginsburg reporting. The intruder entered the, um, docking bay. I'm trying get the shuttle outside to prevent her from stealing it."

Over the radio, she can hear the sounds of discussion in the control booth and her fingers hover over the targeting systems for the shuttle's weapons. If it comes to it, maybe she can disable the missile batteries before they destroy the ship. Maybe.

"Engineer Ginsburg, is the intruder still in the hanger?"

She checks the nav computer. At their present speed, it will be 15 seconds until they're out of firing range. Maybe she should have just tried to take out the rest of the personnel in the base before leaving. She could probably have done it. On the other hand, it would be just like those paranoid fucks at Cerberus to have built a self-destruct mechanism into the base they could use if it was in danger of falling to an enemy. Risks either way.

"Uh, I'm not sure. I think so." 10 seconds.

"In that case, please hold at your present position. We have a team on their way and we may need you to provide fire support."

She mouths the word, "Stall," and Daniel does his best, claiming he can't hear the order as time continues to tick away. 5 seconds.

"Specialist, halt immediately!" But now he's out of luck. Pushing Daniel out of the pilot's chair, she grabs the helm and guns the thrusters. While the shuttle moves full-speed ahead, it take a couple of seconds for Control to realize what's going on, but when they do, they fire three missiles from the last launchers still in range. As the first one approaches them, she banks hard and the missile explodes off the port bow of the shuttle. The shock wave strikes the vessel, throwing Daniel to the floor and shaking the Specter, but she manages to keep her hands firmly on the helm.

The remaining two projectiles are closing fast, and she leans as hard as she can on the thrusters while firing one of their own missiles back at their pursuers. It detonates when it gets close enough, taking both of the remaining missiles with it, and though the blast rattles her bones once again, when the dust settles, they're still standing and well beyond the range of further attacks.

She sets a course for Cyone, and gradually, the Cerberus base fades into the distance. Erin can see now that it's little more than a hollowed-out asteroid designed to be inconspicuous. The better to protect Cerberus' dirty little secrets she supposes. Like her. While she chuckles to herself, Daniel struggles to his feet and begins searching around for something to stop the bleeding now soaking his shaggy brown hair.

With an amused snort, she directs him to a first aid kit. She's spent enough time injured on Cerberus' shuttles to remember where it's stored. After he applies some medi-gel to his head, he slumps down in the chair next to her with a sigh, his fear of the Specter seeming to be momentarily forgotten in his relief at still being alive.

"So I guess I've just quit Cerberus." She only nods, and he continues. "I mean, if there's still a Cerberus to quit. It's been weeks since we've had any word from the outside. The bosses are still pretending everything is fine, but I'm not so sure."

She shakes her head. "There isn't. Cerberus is gone."

"And that energy wave? The relay? The fact that we all have computers inside our heads? What the hell is going on?" He seems lost, a man of science who's universe no longer makes sense.

"It's… complicated." She still doesn't understand half of what's happened herself, and she doesn't exactly trust this involuntary defector to share her fears and doubts with. "You should get some rest. It's six hours to Cyone and you took a nasty bump there."

Daniel finds a cot on the back of the shuttle. She wonders if she should restrain him somehow, but really, what's he going to do? She can't afford sleep but there are pangs of hunger that will need to be addressed. It's hard to tell what nutrient paste they've been pumping into her body, but her biotic usage has left her starving. Searching around a bit, she finds an energy bar, and as she chews on the flavorless cake, the questions she set aside at the base start to creep back up on her.

"There another solution." That's what the Catalyst had told her. She couldn't have controlled the Reapers. If anyone is worthy of that kind of power, which she seriously doubts, she proved long ago that it isn't her. And to destroy them… a part of her wanted to, but the price would have been too high. After all of her mistakes and failures, with the krogan, with the asari, with so many of her crew, she couldn't wipe out the best thing she'd ever achieved, the peace between the quarians and the geth. And that left only synthesis.

She hadn't wanted to die. She had been tired beyond words and heart-sore. There was a part of her that was afraid of seeing the consequences of her choice. But she was a survivor and she had reasons to live, and above all, someone to live for. It was just that she felt like she had no alternative. Not really. So she made her choice and accepted her death.

Except she's still alive and far from her ship, her crew, and the asari she loves, it's hard not be consumed with worry. She hasn't always been the best to Liara. Trying to arrange a threesome with her and Kaiden at the beginning of their relationship, her fling with Kelly when she felt abandoned on Illium… Liara would have had every right to tell her to go screw herself. Instead, after Hagalaz, she'd forgiven Erin, told her that she understood, that she'd been inside her head and she understood. She understood how hard it was, after Shepard's childhood on the streets, after the horrors she'd lived through, to admit even to herself how deeply she cared for Liara. She'd never felt that kind of acceptance before, and since that night, she's tried to do better by the asari. Now, though, she has no idea what kind of mess she might have left Liara in and it's going to make her crazy if she lets it.

There is, she supposes, a perverse reassurance in that. If she'd ever needed proof that the Cerberus clone wasn't the real her, she got it when it had tried to murder not only her but Liara. Whatever mistakes she's made, she could never have done that, and she knows in her bones that's still true. She's not just a clone. It shouldn't be possible, but somehow, she must be the real Shepard.

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**Sorry this one took a while to write. I was a bit blocked and worked on some other stuff in the meantime. Thankfully, I'm past it now. Next Time: Captain Tali'Zorah vas Normandy readies her ship for action.**


	5. Chapter 5

**First Interlude: Tali**

_Engines are operating at 109% of design specifications. Conventional weapons systems are at 101% and the cyber-warfare suite is at 178%._

_Thank you, EDI. It sounds like we're good to go._

_Indeed we are, Captain._

When she was little, some of the other quarian children used to tease the girl who's now called Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. So intrigued was she by all of the mechanical systems that helped to define and sustain life in the Flotilla that they claimed she must be half-geth. Even as a member of a technically inclined race, her skills had stood out; aside from being an admiral's daughter, it had once been the best-known thing about her among her people.

Now that childish taunt has become more or less literally true and Tali's mechanical fascination is serving her in good stead. After the Crucible fired and people became… different, many of them were confused. Their minds no longer worked quite the way they expected them to and adapting to that was challenging.

Not for Tali. To her, this seems natural. She had always felt a connection to the drones she directed in battle, been soothed by the hum of an engine, experienced the suit as almost an extension of her own body. The transformation seemed to be the realization of abilities she'd always wanted to posses and she leapt to understand them better.

She was the first onboard the _Normandy_ to figure out how to communicate directly with EDI and the rest of the ship's systems, and she's still by far the best at it. As far she's concerned, this is a blessing, one final gift from the woman who has already given Tali so much.

A gift on many levels. Though to those accustomed to the outdoors, the air of the ship might be stale, to Tali, it's wonderfully fresh against her skin. The same strange energy from the Crucible that gave them their mechanical facilities has also strengthened her immune system immensely. The suit is no longer a necessity but though it's useful enough to keep wearing, she's shed her mask. Quarians are used to having a barrier between them and those they're speaking with, but she knows that some of the crew always distrusted her because of it, and that's not acceptable anymore.

She activates the intercom. " Joker, lay in a course for the mass relay."

"Aye aye, Captain," he replies. There's a pause. "Man, it still feels weird saying that to you."

It's strange for her to hear it too. The young, naïve girl who'd first joined the crew been thrilled to even be allowed to journey on-board such a ship, and to be commanding it is incredible. At yet, it still doesn't feel right.

This is Shepard's ship. It should be her standing on the bridge, preparing to take them back to Earth. She's gone now though. So are Garrus, Ashley, Kaiden, and Wrex. Almost everyone who started this journey with her those three long years ago is dead and while she's honored that what's left of the crew has chosen her to lead them, she badly wishes it was under better circumstances.

There's one old friend not accounted for though. When the Crucible fired, Liara had taken a shuttle and left the _Normandy_ accompanied by Javik before the rest of them jumped out of the system, unwilling to give up her hope that Shepard might still be alive.

After the _Normandy_ crashed, the initial reports coming in over the QEC made it clear that the people left behind on Earth had survived, but then things started to get strange. There was word of massive violence within the fleet, of uprising by the krogan, batarians, and assembled mercenary groups as well as in-fighting among the geth.

She has no idea what they'll find on the other side of the relay they've spent the past several weeks repairing but that doesn't change what needs to be done. They have to go back. Shepard may be dead, but this is still her ship and Tali still has a duty to her. She will not abandon the person who mattered most to the commander. After all Shepard has given her, Tali owes her that much and far more.

* * *

**Next Time: Shepard reaches Cyone, and finds out more about the state of the Reapers.**


	6. Chapter 6

After hours spent wrestling with her doubts and regrets, Erin finds it a relief when a message comes in over the comm, even if it does signal a return to a state she's all too familiar with: imminent danger.

The voice at the other end sounds human, male, and fairly threatening. "Unidentified Cerberus shuttle, this is Outpost Lion. Give us one good reason why we shouldn't blow you of the sky immediately."

Because I'm Commander Shepard, who just died on the Citadel, but I'm here anyway and feeling much better now. Nah, probably best not to got with that. Better a half-truth in this situation. "Outpost Lion, this is N-7 Operative… Ashley Williams." Why not? Ash should have been a regular N-7, would have if not for all the political bullshit. "I was a prisoner on a disguised Cerberus base in the asteroid belt, but I escaped with this shuttle and am looking for friendlies."

"Request code confirmation of your affiliation and rank, Operative Williams."

She racks her memory. "I've been out of circulation for a little while, but last I knew, the N-7 call-in was Alpha-Tango-Tango-Bravo-Charlie."

There's a pause at the other end of the line, and then a cautious reply. "Very well, Operative. Bring the shuttle in along the flight pattern we're transmitting to you now. Any deviation from course, and we will shoot you down."

"Acknowledged."

The call ends and she turns to the back of the shuttle. "Daniel!"

"Huh? What? I'm awake." The technician staggers up out of the rack and towards the front of the ship. In her opinion he looks like hell, but if that's the worst that can be said of him an hour from now, he'll be fortunate.

"Good. We're landing on Cyone soon. The plan is simple. I go out first and you stay here and let me do the talking. If things go well, they won't shoot at me. If they go very well, they won't shoot at your either."

He swallows hard, but manages to stammer out his agreement, and she returns to flying the ship. The conversation once they get to their destination is going to be far trickier. She has much too famous a face to convince anyone that she's not Commander Shepard or least someone trying to look like her, and Commander Shepard shouldn't be here. She'd be willing to give an explanation, but lacking one herself, that's not really an option. She's just lucky that the details of the mess with her clone on the Citadel never went public. She's optimistic she could convince someone who knew her well that she's the real Shepard, but for strangers, a clone would be the most logical explanation.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, they're on the ground, and as the shuttle door opens, Erin finds herself confronted by what her new sense had warned her was a half a dozen humans and one asari. The humans prove to be Alliance marines in full armor while the asari is a short woman wearing a skin-tight combat suit and wreathed in biotic power. She also appears to be their leader, because when Erin steps into the warm, humid air of Cyone, she's the first to raise her weapon, a nasty looking Piranha shotgun, at the surprising sight confronting them.

The soldiers appear confused, but the asari maintains her cool, staring down the woman who looks like Commander Shepard in a Cerberus jumpsuit carrying an assault rifle without a hint of fear in her purple eyes.

"What the hell kind of Cerberus trick is this, 'Operative Williams'?"

"No trick. I know this must seem strange, but it's actually just what it looks like. I'm Commander Shepard."

"Seriously?" Her eyes narrow and the other soldiers find their discipline, leveling their weapons as well. "Shepard is in the Sol System. Or maybe she's dead. Either way, she's not here on a damn Cerberus shuttle, so give me one good reason I shouldn't blow your fucking head off."

Because I'll kill you first. At least, that's what the instinctive, angry part of her brain wants to say. It's busily calculating the most efficient way to wipe out this group. A well-placed flare in their midst ought to take out most of the grunts. The asari looks to be made of tougher stuff, but if it's a one on one fight, than even without her armor…

Stop it! These people are supposed to be on her side, but the inclination to react to any potential threat violently is so ingrained that it takes an effort to wrestle it down.

Grudgingly, she lowers her rifle and tries again. "Look, I know this is weird. I'm not sure what the hell happened, but after all crazy shit we've lived through in the last two years, isn't it possible that Commander Shepard was transported here somehow?" The asari hesitates slightly, and Erin searches her mind for some way to convince her that this really is Shepard. "I've been on Cyone before. A few months back, I stopped the Reapers from destroying the fuel depots. There was a radiation leak we had to lock down before we could get them back on-line. There's got to be someone here that remembers me."

The shotgun lowers. "Screw it. I wasn't here but I read the report. Maybe this makes me an idiot, but at least I'm not going to be the idiot that tried to kill Commander Shepard. Besides, getting here would hardly be the first impossible thing you did."

Everyone relaxes, and Erin feels the impulse to fight ebb. "Glad to hear it. Just so you know, there's one more person who came in on the shuttle with me. Daniel something. He's a Cerberus tech I got to 'volunteer' to help me escape. He's harmless enough, so there's no need to shoot him in the face just yet."

"We'll throw him in detention and do a full debrief." The asari gestures to two of the soldiers and they board the shuttle. "Anyway, I'm N-7 Operative Jalai. I'd say it's an honor to meet you, but it feels weird when we were just pointing guns at each other."

She extends her hand and Shepard takes it. "No problem." There's something reassuring about the contact. Jalai could never be mistaken for Liara; she's shorter, her face rounder, her flesh a darker shade of blue, but there's a distinctive feeling to the skin of an asari. The smoothness, the texture, reminds Erin for an instant of her distant lover. On the Citadel, she thought she'd never feel Liara's touch again and even the ghost of it… If she ever wants to get back to the real thing, she has to focus on reality.

"So, Commander, do you have any idea what went on at the last battle? I mean, the last thing we heard is that the Crucible fired and then this happened." She holds up her hand, and Erin can see the same green lines that she keeps encountering.

She takes a breath as behind her, Daniel, bedraggled but relieved to be not shot, is being led away. How can she explain everything that happened on the Citadel? "It was me. I activated the Crucible. It was supposed to, well… to do this. To change us in a way that would put a stop to the fighting between organics and synthetics once and for all, that would end the war with the Reapers."

On hearing her final words, Jalai looks slightly uneasy. "Yeah, speaking of them, I think you need to see something."

* * *

The ride in the Mako is uncomfortable. She's always hated that tank. In battle, her style is to be out in the open, moving nimbly from one foe to another, hurling herself into the thick of things. Fighting from inside a vehicle, stuck in a confined space as blasts impact against the hull, unable to maneuver, unable to close, drives her crazy. Once, on Virmire, when she'd had the squad get out and take down a couple of Armature's on foot, Kaidan had called her reckless but if she's going to die, she'd rather do it on her feet than trapped in a metal can.

From the driver's seat, Jalai is providing updates on the situation here on Cyone. She likes what she's seen of the asari so far: tough but sensible, with a bit of bite. Erin can envision her having been a good crew member on the _Normandy_, but the thought makes her shake her head. It's just as well Jalai never served there; Erin probably would just have gotten her killed.

How many did she lose? Maybe the nastiest death had been Garrus' on the damned Collector base. She'd always joked that he was ugly, but what was left of his face after the rifle burst he took had been enough to make even her blanch. Of course, there were Ashley and Wrex on Virmire, the krogan by her own hand when she couldn't get him listen to reason. The consequences of that failure had been weighing heavily on her during the Citadel coup. Kaiden had thought she was a traitor, but unlike on Virmire, she'd hesitated to put him down. EDI hadn't flinched though, and the Major had died cursing Shepard. Plus there'd been Miranda on Horizon, Legion on Rannoch…

"So, when you started your attack, most of our people went with you, but a few of us stayed behind to fight a delaying action against the Reapers. Admiral Hackett told us that if we won, there'd have to be a galaxy left for the victors to come back to. Anyway, it was just some ground forces at first, nothing unmanageable, but about a half an hour before the Crucible activated, this Reaper came out of the sky and started laying waste to our forces. Then you did whatever the hell you did, and once we got over the shock, we started looking around for the thing. Found it crashed in a field a few miles away from the Reactor. We're not sure if it's dead, but it's definitely not right and I figured you'd want to take a look at it."

This wasn't what she thought would happen, she reflects as the Mako climbs the ridge that overlooks the crash site. The Reapers were supposed to end their assault after synthesis, not be destroyed. Did the choice get mixed up somehow? Could that be part of why she's alive? "When was all of this? I've… lost track of the time."

"About three days ago. We haven't had any word from Earth since then."

That's not what she wanted to hear. The sooner she gets back there, the better. "What about the relay?"

"The energy wave damaged it somewhat, but we're working on that."

"Who's 'we'?"

"After the Crucible fired, a lot of the ships back on Earth weren't sure what was going to happen, so they started jumping out of the system. It happened so fast that they didn't have chance to plot a proper course and a few of them ended up here."

For one hopeful instant, she wonders if the Normandy could have been one of those ships, but then Jalai continues. "The turian dreadnought _Pallatrius_ and the salarian destroyer _Essence of Outrage_ are both out by the relay now. They've started repair work, but it'll probably still be a few weeks before…"

_Izari absorbed female detected. Izari absorbed male detected. Izari absorbed male detected. Izari absorbed male detected. Izari absorbed female detected. Izari absorbed male detected. Izari absorbed male detected. Izari absorbed female detected…_

It hits her all at once, the awareness of other presences that's she's experienced before, but this time it's magnified a million time over, not a notification but a cacophony. The screams of an entire species hammer away at her skull, tides of alien rage, despair, and pain overwhelming her senses. Her body lurches aimlessly, only the harness keeping her in her seat and off of the floor. She's dimly aware of Jalai reaching over to support her, but under the shear volume of the onslaught her mind begins to retreat. The now-driverless Mako careens over the ridge and the last thing Erin is aware of before she loses consciousness is the looming wreckage of a half-dead god glimpsed through the window of the tank.

* * *

**Next Time: Struggling to save her sanity, Shepard retreats into her memories.**


	7. Chapter 7

It's as if someone has opened a gateway to hell inside Erin Shepard's head and all the souls of the damned are pouring through it at once. She tries desperately to push back the river of hate and pain that she's drowning in, but it's no use. Her head feels like its breaking apart and as she staggers under a torrent of incomprehensible anger, she can do nothing but retreat, abandoning her struggle to speak or move. While her thoughts come apart, she sifts desperately through her memories, trying to find something that she can hold on to, anything that will anchor her if only for a moment…

…Erin sat on the side of the bed, her breathing labored, her face flushed with shame. She turned away from her lover, but even as she did, the Specter felt a warm hand come to rest on her naked shoulder and soft lips plant a loving kiss on the back of her neck. It's all right, Erin." Liara's voice was understanding and gentle. "We do not have to…"

"I wanted to. I didn't mean for this to happen." They only had a very little time here in her apartment on the Citadel before they had to get back to the war, and now she'd gone and ruined it.

Liara's arms wrapped around her and she felt the asari's face nuzzling against her red hair. "You don't have to apologize. The joining can sometimes bring unwanted memories to the surface. Given the incredible stress that you are under, it is not surprising that this happened."

"We're supposed to be trying to forget that for tonight. All that I want is to be here with you, but… Every time I try to focus, all of the blood keeps coming back to the surface."

"Erin," Liara's voice was soft, but there was resolve in it as well. "Do you trust me?"

"More than anyone."

"Then let me back in. Please."

She shook her head. Liara was the one bright thing she had in a galaxy drowning in darkness. The asari deserved better than the hell in her mind. "I don't want you to have to see those things. They're my mistakes, my failures. They shouldn't have to be yours."

"Don't try to protect me, Erin. I am stronger than that and you are my bondmate. We promised that we would spend our lives together, and whatever you have suffered, you should not have to deal with it alone."

Hesitantly, Erin accepted, opening her mind to Liara. The horrors swirling around her thoughts rushed by one after another, a film festival of the worst the galaxy had to offer. The screams of her men dying as the crashed through the batarian lines on Torfan… The colonists of Eden Prime impaled on Geth spikes, their bodies twisting and warping into unrecognizable horrors… The bloody remains of Garrus lying on the floor of the Collector base, her friend's features almost unrecognizable… ship after ship exploding in the atmosphere above Earth…

And then she could feel Liara standing next to her, taken aback for a moment perhaps, but retaining her determination in the face of the maelstrom. "Breathe, Erin. Stop fighting the memories."

"I don't understand."

"Instead, replace them. Go into your mind and find something that takes you away from all of this, that makes you happy. I will help."

She tries, but it's so hard to think of anything but war and suffering. "I don't know how…"

"Begin with a single thing. An image, a sound, a feeling. Build from there…"

* * *

…It was the sound of her breathing that she remembered first. Though Liara had long ago drifted off to sleep, Erin was still awake, just lying next to her new lover and listening to the rise and fall of her chest. It was something she'd never done before. Normally, once the sex was finished, she couldn't get her partners out of her bed fast enough. Tonight, though, she hadn't even considered it. The bed in her cabin might have been narrow, but looking at the lovely form of Liara T'Soni resting peacefully next to her, Shepard felt like there was more than enough room in it for both of them.

Gently, careful not to wake Liara, she brushed her finger-tips over the asari's face, feeling the smooth, delightful texture of her skin under her touch. God, Erin could be a fool sometimes. What could she have been thinking when she tried to convince Kaiden that all three of them should sleep together? How could she not have wanted this wonderful creature all to herself?

Because she'd been afraid, she knew now. As soon as she saw Liara, she'd been attracted to the cute archeologist, but as the weeks had passed after that first meeting on Therum, she'd realized it was more than her usual lust for a pretty asari. She was developing real feelings for the woman, and that wasn't something she knew how to handle. She was the Butcher of Torfan, someone who left a trail of fire in her wake both on the battlefield and in the bedroom. She didn't fall in love.

Besides, deep down, she'd believed that once Liara saw the real her, she'd stop looking at Shepard as a hero. A naïve scientist like her would get one glance at the ugliness in her head and she'd run away screaming from any relationship and probably off of the _Normandy_ altogether. The thought of that loss, of starting a real relationship and then losing it, had hurt Erin more than she wanted to admit, and so she'd tried to sabotage the connection in advance, to make this just another meaningless fling.

It hadn't worked. She'd been surprised that Kaiden had been scarred off; she would have thought that he'd do anything to get in her pants, but Liara had stayed. She'd made Shepard wait, but for once in her life, Erin had been willing to do that, and it was a choice that she now knew she would never regret.

The usual crude vocabulary she employed when describing encounters like the one she'd had with the Consort was wholly inadequate to capture what had happened tonight. Liara had been enthusiastic despite her inexperience, but it wasn't the physical pleasure Erin had shared with the asari that made the difference. When they'd joined, when her lover had a look inside of her mind, Erin had felt not rejection, but only love and acceptance accompanying Liara's desire and that had made this better than she could have dreamed.

Now, lying in bed, Shepard felt more at peace than she could ever remember being. Tomorrow, the _Normandy_ would reach Ilos and once more they would have to fight for their lives. Tonight, though, she was content to lie there, her arm wrapped around Liara, and just be with her…

* * *

…Slowly, Erin's breathing began to return to normal. She still felt Liara's presence in her thoughts, calm and loving. "You see, Shepard, I'm not going anywhere. You didn't scare me off that easily two years ago and you won't now."

In the present, Shepard pauses. The cacophony is still there, but for just an instant, she feels a serenity that allows her some small bit of detachment, some space to think again. The voices may be overwhelming her senses, but that's what this is: a sense. And it's her sense. Jalai didn't collapse. The Reaper didn't do this to Erin, not without the aid of something in her and maybe that means she can make it stop.

As the thunder of screams rages, she turns her thoughts inward, trying to address that other voice, the computer in her mind, to tell it to stop perceiving whatever the hell it's perceiving.

"Turn this shit off."

_Izari absorbed female detected. Izari absorbed male detected. Izari absorbed female detected. Izari absorbed male detected. Izari absorbed female detected. Izari absorbed male detected…_

Stilling her thoughts as best she can, she tries something else. The voices aren't a part of her. They're coming into her mind. Picture a door that they're bursting through, a portal to the outside. And then close it.

_Externalized self-awareness disabled. _

And then there was silence.

* * *

Her green eyes open to reveal Jalai standing over her, the asari's smile unexpectedly warm. Erin shifts her body, and beneath her she can feel a mattress, simple but sturdy, and a turian wearing an army medic's uniform strides into her field of vision.

"What happened," she tries to ask but her throat burns when she starts to form the words, nothing but a harsh rasp emerging.

"Commander." The turian holds up his hand and Erin realizes that she can't sense either of them there. "Don't try to speak just yet. You've been yelling for about 2 hours and I think you've thrown out your voice."

Jalai passes her a cup of water and she greedily downs it, the cool liquid providing some relief to the burning in her throat. "You scared the hell out of me back there, Shepard. As soon as we got near the Reaper corpse, you collapsed, and even after I turned the Mako around, you screamed all the way back to the infirmary. Two hours straight. Then a couple of minutes ago, you just stopped. What happened to you?"

Erin's voice is little more than a whisper. "Not sure. Somehow, felt the Reaper in my head. Not one voice though, millions of them."

"Goddess. That must have been… I guess I would've lost it too. Do you know why you heard them and I didn't?"

"Not sure. Need to find out though. Might be," she'd like to laugh but it hurts too much, "Important."

* * *

**Next Time: Jack and her students face a last stand.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Second Interlude: Jack**

When you were in this kind of situation, you were always expected to say, "I never thought it would end like this." Bullshit. Outnumbered, fighting for her life, making sure to take plenty of the assholes down with her: this is exactly how Jack always expected it to end. She just wishes her kids weren't going to die with her.

She and what's left of her students have been trapped in the ballroom of the _Destiny Ascension_ for almost two days. They have no idea what happened to the Council, and it's doubtful they'll ever find out, because Jack's not sure how much longer they can stop the Blue Suns from getting in.

It's the fatigue more than anything that's beating them: with breaks, she's confidant they could hold off the mercenaries nearly forever, but biotics need sleep and a lot of calories to fight their best, but they're low on supplies and these fuckers have been denying them rest. Making attacks day and night, withdrawing before they can take too many losses: the enemy is wearing them down. Even Jack's own, nearly inexhaustible energy is starting to be drained and most of her kids are dead on their feet if not actually dead yet, and she's not confidant they have enough left to throw back this next push.

Two soldiers charge up the narrow staircase from the lower decks that her people have been using as a choke-point and Jack catches them in a pull field, letting them drift helplessly while her students open fire with their pistols. From behind them though, a grenade is flung into the ballroom and though everyone on her side scrambles out of the way in time, the explosion provides sufficient cover for another half-dozen of the enemy to flood into the room. Elizabeth or Thierry should have pre-empted them with a singularity, but they're too tired, and Jack can't muster the energy to chide them for it.

She slams one of the newcomers against the wreckage of a piano with her biotics, his corpse imbedding itself in the pile of wood and wire before taking down another with her Carnifax, but even as he falls, she sees Elizabeth topple over dead, her pale, pretty face blasted apart by a shotgun blast from an onrushing batarian. Rodriguez howls with rage and nails the killer with a warp before shooting him twice in the chest, and the remainder of the mercs retreat behind the far side of the doorway, but it's only a matter of time now.

And maybe not much of it. From down a side corridor she thought was clear, the thunderous sound of heavy boots and guttural bellows fills Jack's ears. Shit! Krogan! If Wreav's men are here, their position is truly hopeless, and as from up the staircase, she hears another attack being prepared, Jack yells to the remaining half-dozen or so students, "Fall back to the sitting room! I'll hold these assholes off as long as I can." She ignores their protests, waving them on while raising the strongest biotic dome her tired body can muster, but she knows it's a stop-gap measure at best. That room is a dead-end; all she's doing is buying them a little time.

Out from their cover, two of the mercenaries emerge, their assault rifles pelting her shield with rounds. It holds though and with a roar of defiance, she throws the two off of their feet but more are already emerging to take their place.

The door to the corridor explodes in a shower of timbers and Jack braces herself for the barrage of shotgun blasts she knows must be coming. It doesn't. Instead she hears a massive bellow, a war-cry that she's heard before.

"I! Am! Krogan!"

The massive form of Urdnot Grunt storms into her field of vision, crashing through the impromptu barricades her students had set up. A batarian frantically unloads his pistol into the charging krogan, but he barely seems to feel it through his armor, a thunderous blast from his Claymore ripping the mercenary in half. A tall, thin human tries to stab him with the omni-blade on his rifle, but Grunt grabs him in a huge hand, smashing the man's skull like a melon against a wall. As his broken body crumples to the ground, ten or so more krogan are pouring in behind their leader, their shotguns and rage making swift work of the mercenary forces.

"Forward!" Jack motions her students back into the fight, and the spectacle of the krogan forces throwing back their enemies inspires renewed vigor into the young biotics. A hail of warps and throws engulf the already-wavering mercenaries on the staircase and only minutes later, it's all over, two days of fighting ended in a savage counter-attack.

Despite her fatigue, Jack finds the huge tank-bred krogan, throwing her small arms around him in a impromptu bear hug. He gives her a hearty thump on the back that almost knocks the wind out of her.

"Shit, it's good to see you Grunt. But I thought Wreav had all the krogan fighting on the other side of this cluster-fuck."

Grunt laughs. "Wreav can kiss my quad. Shepard was my battle-master, you are my sister, and he's a rancid piece of varren dung."

She always did like the big lug. "What about your guys?"

"Heh. Aralakah Company fights for me. A few of them disagreed, but I straightened them out." There's a round of laughter from the rest of the krogan and Grunt raises his gun in the air. "Come on boys! Let's go take the bridge."

* * *

**Next Time: Shepard prepares to return to Earth, but the journey is an uncertain one.**


	9. Chapter 9

Erin has never been very good at waiting. When she was in training, one of her instructors joked that she decided to master the biotic charge because she was so impatient to get into combat, and he may not have been wrong. For the last two weeks though, she's had no choice but to cool her heels. No matter how badly she wants to get back to Earth, she's not going anywhere until the relay is fixed.

She finds ways to pass the time. She's learned how to turn her new sense on and off at will, and as long as she's not too near the Reaper, she can do so without fear of the mental assault that incapacitated her before. She's also found out a little more about what she's wrought. Not only was the Reaper disabled when the Crucible fired, so too were the ground forces that had been attacking the fuel depot. The energy wave that washed over the planet left them gibbering wrecks, useless abominations that the soldiers had put out of their misery.

Most of the time, she keeps to herself. Once her identity becomes known and accepted, there's an endless stream of soldiers wanting to thank her, shake her hand or buy her drinks at the sorry excuse for a bar, and her heart isn't in playing the hero right now. Sure, she seems to have defeated the Reapers, but at what cost? What havoc has she unleashed? What happened to her ship? To Liara? Until she has those answers, she's not going to celebrate.

At last though, the wait for repairs is over, and as she argues on the comm with Captain Vorenus of the turian dreadnought _Pallatrius_, she's not particularly interested in hearing about further delays. "So, you're telling me that the relay is fixed but you're not going to Earth?"

"That's right, commander. We've talked to a few other systems over the QEC. Some of them have initiated repairs on their relays, but none have yet completed them; too many pressing humanitarian problems in the more populated systems. From Sol however, we have heard nothing. We have to assume they have not yet repaired the relay there."

"If they haven't and we jump anyway, what happens?"

The mandibles of the captain's hologram twitch. "Honestly, we have no idea. This is a situation without precedents. The Mass Relays have never been damaged like this in the past."

Yeah, that's her, Erin reflects bitterly, breaking things no one ever has broken before. "So what's your plan then? We sit on our asses and wait for something to happen?"

"I would not put it that way but yes. We wait for confirmation that the other relays are properly repaired before taking action."

Shepard pauses. That would be the cautious, prudent thing to do. She, however, has not lived her life to according to prudence. The silence from Earth frightens her and she cannot sit idly by while everyone she cares about, everything that she fought for, may be in danger.

"I'll go." Her voice is calm and level. "I'll take the Cerberus shuttle and jump to Earth. If I survive, I'll try to get word back to you that it's safe. That way, you won't have to risk a larger ship."

The general shakes his head. "But we'd be risking you. You're a symbol, an inspiration to everyone here, to everyone in the galaxy."

And also supposed to be dead, she thinks, though no one else alive knows that. If she's lost Liara, lost the rest of her crew, she doesn't know what she'll do. She stopped the Reapers. The galaxy can work out the rest on their own; this is personal. "I understand that," she informs the captain, "On my authority as a Council Specter, I'm taking the shuttle."

* * *

It's nighttime when she makes her way to the ship, although given that people can now adapt their eyes to the darkness, it doesn't offer much cover. Still, with everyone asleep, Shepard hopes she'll be able to leave with a minimum of fuss.

She's not entirely successful. As she begins packing her gear onto the shuttle, she feels the now-familiar notification in her thoughts.

_One life-form detected. Asari baseline. Designation: Jalai_

Repeated exposure to individuals allows her to identify them, and she supposes that if anyone is going to interrupt her departure, she's just as happy it's Jalai. The dark-blue asari has been a friend to Erin in her time here, treating her not as a hero but as a fellow soldier. Their talks, trading war stories, are one of the few things Shepard will miss about the base.

"Hey." Her tone is friendly, but Shepard notices that like her, the asari is in full combat gear.

"You here to stop me?" She doubts there will be violence, but she's not going to be turned back.

"Nah. Captain Vorenus wanted me to, called an hour ago talking about morale. But I get why you have to go back." She pauses. "You know I had a bondmate once. If I thought there was even a chance that she was waiting for me beyond that relay, no risk would stop me from going to her."

Erin's heard Jalai mention her a few times, a turian named Juvia. "What happened to her?"

"Nothing bad. She just got old and died. Gave me a wonderful daughter though." A wistful smile appears on her pink lips. "Best decades of my life."

"So, if you're not here to stop me…"

"I'm going with you."

"I can't ask you to do that." She's already gotten so many crew members killed, and she doesn't want to add Jalai to that list. "I don't know that this isn't going to end very badly very fast."

The asari smiles grimly. "I know that. But I need to do this too. That daughter I mentioned; she's serving on the _Destiny Ascension_." She pauses. "I guess I owe you for saving her life three years ago."

No, she thinks, you owe Liara. Shepard had been so furious with the Council for nearly ending her hunt for Saren, and was repelled by the thought of sending Alliance soldiers to their deaths saving them. It was Liara that had convinced her otherwise. Her desperate concern for the lives of the people aboard the ship had reminded Erin that there was more at stake then her anger with a few politicians. Still, whoever saved her daughter, Jalai deserves the chance to see her again.

"All right. Get your stuff on board."

Jalai simply replies, "Yes, Commander."

* * *

As Erin pilots the shuttle towards the Mass Relay, she feels an unusual sense of trepidation. She always liked travelling this way. There was something thrilling about being flung across the galaxy in the blink of an eye, but now she has no idea if she's even going to come out the other side. Back on the Citadel, she'd been ready to die, but now… now she has another chance, and so much to do.

At first, everything proceeds as it always does. The relay begins to fire, the space-distorting energies grasping the ship. The acceleration starts, the force of it pressing the two passengers against their seats, and the world changes, light filling their field of vision.

Their arrival however is anything but normal. Instead of a smooth transition back to normal space, their shuttle is flung from the broken relay out of control, glimpses of its damaged bulk briefly visible to Shepard as they spin wildly through space. Only their harnesses keep them in their seats and though Erin grips the helm as tightly as she can, trying to wrestle the vessel under control, it's going too fast to be stopped by their thrusters.

Before she can figure out how to deal with that problem however, the ship is rocked by a savage impact, some unknown object piercing its shields and slamming into the hull with tremendous force. The shuttle changes directions with a stomach-churning wrench, and as Erin looks down, she can see red damage indicators flashing all across the control panel. Two of the four thrusters are off-line with the others down to 45% functionality, and power to the on-board systems is failing rapidly. The only consolation is that the impact seems to have broken their momentum somewhat, knocking them out of their spin, but Shepard knows that she's going to have to set the ship down soon before she loses control entirely. Scanning the field in front of her, she can only find one possible destination, the planet currently filling much of her screen: Earth.

She steers as best she can past the wreckage of ships floating near the planet, and beside her, Jalai squeezes her eyes open and shut, trying to make herself focus amidst the wild lurches. "Shepard, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, but the ship isn't. I'm going to have to try to land it on Earth. This may get a little rough." They're jolted in their chairs as the ship enters the upper atmosphere. "Or a lot. Not entirely sure how many systems are still functioning."

The asari laughs grimly. "Wouldn't be my first ugly landing."

Erin snorts back, "Stick with me long enough, it probably won't be your last one either."

The shuttle dives through the atmosphere. The shields have regained some functionality, but they're weakening, and she can feel the heat from re-entry start to rise inside the cabin. Their combat armor will protect them fairly well from that, but it's the least of their problems. She doesn't have much in the way of steering control left, and the last two thrusters won't last much longer. She puts whatever they have remaining into breaking, trying to reduce their speed, but she's not sure it'll be enough.

"What now?", Jalai grits her teeth.

Erin's not sure. Far below her, she can see a rocky plain. There are worse landing zones, she supposes. The third thruster fails, and the last one isn't going to do the trick. Looking out the front window, the hard earth looms, growing larger with alarming speed. The window! A sudden, desperate idea seizes her.

"Jalai! Shoot out the windshield."

"What?"

"We're going to unbuckle our harnesses and jump." The asari has mastered the same biotic charge she has. "Let's just hope the energy fields keep us alive."

Jalai raises her shotgun, firing several rounds from the Piranha into the window. It's made of stern stuff, but designed to resist damage from the outside, not the inside. It cracks and then shatters, the shards that fly in deflected by their barriers. "Let me know when you think we're in position."

The asari commando surveys the grounds. "Okay, I think I've got our target." She points to a spot on the horizon and Shepard angles the ship down, making sure that it will hit the ground well ahead of where they'll land. "Three, two, one…" The voice in her head informs her it's making ready as well:

_Rerouting biotic pathways. Increasing power to fields._

She hopes that'll be enough to keep her alive. In synch, the two biotics hit the release on their harnesses and before they can fly free, they jump with a rush far greater than Erin is accustomed to.

The speed of the charge has been augmented by the dying ship's velocity and Shepard hits the earth with a thunderclap unlike any she's ever generated. The earth around her explodes and the impact rips through her, breaking apart even her enhanced barriers and leaving her crumpled on the ground in agony.

While she tries to force air back into her lungs, she assesses her injuries. Her head feels like it's been rammed by a dreadnought, a couple of her ribs are cracked, and her left arm is numb, but she's alive, so it could be worse. In the distance the shuttle explodes on impact, and as she watches the fireball, she activates the medi-gel dispenser in her armor. The cool relief of the drugs floods her body, and as the pain recedes, she drags herself to her feet, staggering towards the nearby crater left by Jalai. Before she can get to the asari however, her preternatural awareness triggers once more. The sense of proximity is weaker than it ever has been, the person it's detecting more distant. But the message still nearly knocks her from her feet.

_Life-form detected. Asari baseline. Designation: Liara T'Soni_

* * *

**Next Time: Shepard tries to figure our where she is and find some way to get to Liara. **


	10. Chapter 10

Liara is here! Shepard's first reaction is to pull off her battered helmet, looking around frantically for a glimpse of her bondmate, but she quickly realizes that wherever Liara may be, it's too far away to be visible. Concentrating, she can get a sense of the direction the asari is in, but since taking a few steps in it doesn't meaningfully increase how close she feels, it's clear to Erin that her search isn't over yet.

Meanwhile, Jalai has crawled out of her own crater, but unfortunately, her companion is in somewhat worse shape than Shepard. Her left leg is shredded, and the top of her head is covered in blood. She's also applied medi-gel, but there's no way she's going to make it out of these badlands under her own power.

Erin makes her way over to the asari, who's lain back down on the ground. "Hey. How bad is it?"

Jalai grimaces, blinking in an effort to clear the pain. "Not good. I think I see why they never taught us that move in training."

Shepard shakes her head. "Well, we're alive. But we're going to need a pick-up. Since we're back on Earth, maybe the Alliance can help us out."

The asari nods and activates her omni-tool, scanning the comm frequencies for friendlies. Most of the channels she encounters are encrypted, but after a few minutes, Jalai manages to find one she has access to. The static resolves itself into the voice of what sounds like a male human. "This is Alliance Outpost Chimera. Who am I speaking to?"

"Jalai Siranis, N-7 Operative. Verification code: Alpha-Zeta-Zeta-Tango-Alpha." She holds her voice steady, and Shepard is impressed with her determination not to let the pain show.

There's a brief pause while the people at the other end of the line check the codes. "Acknowledged, Operative Jalai. What can we do for you?"

"First off, you can get a fix on my omni-tool's location and tell me where I am. My shuttle's crashed."

There's another pause. "I read your position as somewhere in what's left of South Dakota." When the asari doesn't seem to comprehend, he adds, "That's in North America. About 250 miles from our location."

Jalai coughs, and there are flecks of blood in her spittle. "I need a pick-up at my location for myself and one friendly. Area is clear of hostiles, but both of us are injured."

"Will do. Dispatching a medical shuttle now."

The next few minutes are spent performing what first aid they can, but since their medical supplies were incinerated along with the shuttle, there's not much to do besides apply more medi-gel and wait on the hard ground for extraction.

Erin turns to her companion, her voice quiet. "I can sense Liara, Jalai. She's here, somewhere." The asari looks surprised, but says nothing, and Shepard continues, "I don't understand how it's possible, because she's not nearby, but I know she's on Earth. After the Alliance picks us up, I'm going to find her."

"You sure you're up for it?", Jalai manages, her voice pained. "You look like crap."

Shepard laughs darkly. "I've been worse. I'll let them patch me up a little, but I have to keep going."

Jalai just nods her head weakly in understanding, and they wait in silence, two warriors lying together under a darkening sky.

* * *

It's a little under an hour later when the shuttle arrives, it's silhouette descending out of the sky a welcome sight to the weary soldiers. The ramp lowers and two sets of medical techs emerge bearing stretchers, their synthesis-altered eyes glowing in the night. The first team carefully lifts Jalai onto one of them, but as the second pair approaches Shepard, she waves them off, and when she makes her way towards the shuttle, they get their first clear look at her.

"Hey," one of them says, while Jalai is being lifted aboard, "Did anyone ever tell you look exactly like Commander Shepard?"

"I am," she simply replies, climbing onto the shuttle. Her stomach muscles send a needle of pain through her as she moves, but it's manageable.

The crew stares at each other and then back at her, seeming incredulous, but Jalai nods wearily from aboard her stretcher, and the soldiers seem torn between disbelief and acceptance. "But I thought…" A short, stocky man starts, "They said you were gone. That you'd died on the Citadel."

"Should have known," a taller woman with a dark complexion disagrees as the ship starts to take off, "Shepard wouldn't have died that easily."

Erin shakes her head. "It's a long and classified story." If it wasn't before, the Specter is classifying it now, at least until she understands what happened herself.

And then she pauses. The shuttle has started flying, and at it's accelerating speed, she can feel the distance between herself and Liara becoming measurably greater. "Stop the ship!"

The tone of practiced command in her voice overcomes any lingering doubts as to her identity and as the shuttle hovers in mid-air, Shepard turns her thoughts inward. Now that she's sensed Liara from two distinct places, she might be able to calculate her bondmate's location, and when she asks the question to the voice in her mind, she gets a reply:

_Triangulating Position…. Asari Designation: Liara T'Soni 978 miles south-west of current location._

Clearing her head, she turns to the crew. "How is Jalai? Does she need to go to a hospital?"

"Well," the taller woman opines, we can stop the bleeding and patch up the leg here, but we really should get her to a medical facility for further care."

"If she can wait, I need you to turn this ship around." She pulls up a map on the omni-tool they gave her back on Cyone. The course suggested by her internal calculations would put Liara in New Mexico, and she makes her way to the cockpit to show it to the pilot. "I need you to get us here."

The pilot, an affable-looking young woman named Lt. Choi, according to her tags, seems distressed. "Ma'am, that would bring us straight into the middle of a war zone."

"What war are you talking about? I though the Reapers had been disabled?" The Lieutenant stares at her like she's gone crazy, and Shepard explains, "I've only just gotten back to Earth. Now what the hell are you talking about!" She can feel fear starting to rise in her. If that's a war zone, Liara's caught in it.

"We're not sure quite how it started, Ma'am, but a little while after you fired the Crucible, there was an uprising. The krogan, the batarians, and most of the mercenary companies tried to seize control of as much of the fleet as they could. There's been fighting ever since."

Fucking Wreav. She knew that thug was no good; it's why she convinced Mordin to fake the Genophage cure and it seems she was right, for all the good it's doing now. "Why haven't they been put down? I know they've got some tough guys on their side, but the way I see it, they still should be badly outnumbered."

"Well, I guess so, but… A lot of things have gone wrong. The bastards took us by surprise and with Admiral Hackett killed in the initial attacks and the Council missing, there's no one leader everyone will follow. Some of the quarians went over to the rebels too, claimed they were siding with the other 'oppressed peoples of the galaxy.'"

Erin sighs. If Han'Gerrel isn't mixed up in this somehow, she'll kiss a volus. "Plus, a few of the others aren't being any damned help. Nobody's heard from the leviathans since the war ended, and from the reports, the Geth are fighting among themselves out by Saturn, so they're useless too."

Shepard's hands run over her scalp, a sense of gnawing futility churning in her gut. How did things turn this bad so quickly? Synthesis was supposed to bring peace, but the defeat of the Reapers just seems to have cleared the way for another massive war. "I see. And the _Normandy_?"

"No clue. Nobody's seen it since the Crucible fired."

Not what she wanted to hear, but it could be worse. There's a good chance her ship just jumped out, and is stranded behind one of the relays like she was. It does raise the question of how Liara got separated from the rest of the crew though; she had left the injured asari on the ship. "Well," she says bitterly, "Thanks for bringing me up to speed on this cluster fuck."

"It does seem like one, doesn't it, Ma'am." Then the pilot's tone brightens. "You'll set it right though, won't you?"

"The cult of Shepard." That's what her clone called it, and right now, Erin can see why. Honestly, she has no idea how to fix this, but that won't stop everyone from expecting her to.

"I'll try," is the best she can manage. "But you have to get me down to New Mexico. I know it'll be dangerous, but just make it as close as you can, and I'll figure out the rest."

The pilot salutes. "Yes, Ma'am." Benefits of the damn cult, she supposes. She could tell herself that she's risking their lives because they'll need Liara's resources, but that's bullshit and she knows it.

The truth is much simpler. She needs Liara. If Shepard's going to make this right, her bondmate has to survive. If she dies, then Erin's done caring about the rest of the galaxy. Carving a bloody trail through anyone she can blame will be all she has left.

* * *

The flight takes far too long, even though it's only a couple of hours. The techs bind her ribs, and clean up her other wounds, but that only eats up twenty minutes or so. With Jalai now sedated, there's not much else for Erin to do the rest of the way but worry. In the back of her head, she can still feel Liara's presence. The asari moves a few times, but not far, and Shepard knows that her lover is still alive and getting closer. Despite that, she also realizes that at any moment, that awareness could flicker out, and all she can do is wait to get there.

To pass the time, she checks her gear. The Reegar carbine she picked up on Cyone seems to have survived the impact intact. She's not sure she'd trust the battered Hornet submachine gun, but she finds a Tempest on the shuttle that will serve just as well. Her armor is all right. A bit worse for the wear perhaps, with dents and gashes in it, but they make that stuff to last.

These simple pre-mission checks, the things she's done a million times before, usually calm her down, but not right now. So much has happened, and to be so close to the most important thing in her universe and yet not know what she's going to find when she gets there is unbearable.

* * *

They're about 30 miles out from where she calculates Liara is when things start to get complicated. Lines of fire streak across the night sky, and it's clear that they've found the war, krogan and batarians attacking the asari if the Alliance's intelligence is correct. She urges Lt. Choi to get them closer, but they're not near enough for her to sense anyone but Liara when the ship shakes with the impact of a missile just off the starboard side. The shuttle continues forward, but when a rocket impacts the hull and damage indicators start flashing along the pilot's console, Erin knows she's put the crew in as much danger as even her need can justify.

"Get us down," she yells. "We can't take much more."

"Where?"

"There." She picks out the top of a mesa overlooking the battlefield. From that vantage point, she should be able to locate Liara easily.

Lt. Choi sets the ship down, and as the door opens, Erin spares a last look back at the sleeping form of Jalai. "Get better," she says softly. "Find your daughter."

* * *

**Next Time: Shepard races to reach Liara, but will she be in time to save her bondmate?**


	11. Chapter 11

As the shuttle door closes behind her, a vision of devastation confronts Shepard. Looking down the mesa, she can see a thousand flashes of light, biotics and artillery, barriers and guns, all illuminating a bloody tableau in the valley below her. She can feel them now, awareness of batarians, krogan and asari filling her consciousness, but there's only one person that she wants to locate. Shifting through the mass of life-forms, she reaches out, trying to figure which of the spots of light is the woman she loves.

She finds Liara near the front lines, at the place where the signals change from asari to their enemies. There's a cluster of other asari nearby, but they're being hard-pressed, and Shepard starts trying to calculate the best route through the enemy to reach her bondmate's side.

And then, in an instant, all her rational calculation vanish in a flash of orange light, as the earth around Liara explodes.

_Asari Designation: Liara T'Soni injured. Significant damage to torso. Minor damage to head…_

Casting aside planning, Erin jumps, biotically hurling herself down the slope at two batarian scouts moving along the base of the mesa. She arrives in a flash of light, the force flinging the scouts away from her, but she doesn't even look down, turning to find her next target.

_Biotic cool-down in progress. 4 seconds until…_

Fuck that. She screams, "force it" at her internal clock, and jumps again, crashing into a krogan soldier re-loading his shotgun. He staggers backwards, but by the time he raises his head and levels his rifle at her, she's already gone.

_Biotic pathways operating at 112% of optimal levels. Recommend…_

Ignoring the warning along with the excruciating shocks coursing through her head, she hurls herself into her next target, a pair of krogan heading to supplement an assault on an asari position. The shorter of the pair is knocked to the ground, but the larger one only flinches as his shields collapse. With a roar, his clawed hand lashes out for Erin, but she's too quick. Diving to the right, she ducks under the blow, and while he turns to engage her again, she launches herself forward, the blade of her shotgun ripping through his armor. He staggers backwards, orange blood pouring out of his torso, but rather than finish him, she looks away, picking out her bondmate amid the chaos of the battlefield. She can see Liara clearly at last, her lover lying on the ground, with three krogan encircling her, and somehow, she forces herself to jump again.

_Biotic pathways operating at 134% of optimal levels. System overload imminent…_

The pain is unbelievable, every nerve ending on fire, but in her desperate rush to reach Liara, she barely notices, crashing into the cluster of krogan. The smallest of three is knocked out cold, his lightly armored form skidding to a stop several meters away. The other two remain on their feet however and the nearer warrior, a scarred old brute, blasts away at her with his shotgun. The impact causes her to wince through her barriers, but they hold and her Reegar responds with a river of electric fire. The krogan's body convulses and then melts as his armor gives way, the stench of burning flesh thankfully muffled by her helmet.

The Spectre ejects the spent thermal clip from her shotgun, trying to reload, but the massive third krogan is already on her. A powerful blow from his armored fist catches her squarely in the helmet, shattering her weakened barrier and knocking her from her feet. The carbine skids away across the desert floor and her vision, already blurred with biotic feedback swims as she fumbles desperately, trying to draw the Tempest at the on-rushing krogan.

_Mild concussion sustained. Recommend withdrawal from combat encounter._

Before Erin can clear the holster, a heavy boot kicks her in her bandaged ribs, and she rolls along the ground, the gun slipping from her grasp, the Spectre barely able to even see the monster through the blinding agony. She manages to grab the submachine gun, but even as she tries to aim, she can dimly perceive a much larger rifle being leveled at her.

And then the krogan jerks, his body struck by an attack from an unknown source. As he turns to find his assailant, Shepard unloads on him, firing the entire clip of her Tempest into the brute. His shields break and he staggers away from Erin, the rifle dropping to the ground, his body bleeding yellow from a dozen places, but he's not dead yet. With a bellow of rage, he charges at her again, and she tries her limited best to roll out of the way.

There's no need. Before he reaches Erin, his beady eyes go wide with shock as his body is engulfed from behind in a blast of biotic energy. He crumples to the ground, dead, his life fading out of her awareness, and as his body falls, Erin can see his attacker: there, holding herself up on her hands and knees, the last vestiges of biotic power fading, is Liara. Purple blood stains her blue face, and her body is covered in sand and dirt, but right then, Erin can't imagine anything more beautiful.

Forcing herself to stand on legs that feel like crumbling embers, Shepard staggers towards her bondmate. She has to get them away from the battlefield; neither of them is in any shape to…

_Six life-forms detected. Batarian baseline._

Shit. She turns to see the squad bearing down on them, rifles at the ready. There's no way she can fight that many in her condition unless… Shepard grits her teeth, reaching as deep inside herself as she can to find a little more power. Her brain is a live wire, and it takes every ounce of strength she can muster to not collapse into a convulsing mass, but she can't. Not now. If she does, she and, worse, Liara, are dead. The batarians are aiming their rifles, and the energy starts to gather in her hands.

_Biotic pathways at 163% of optimal levels. Risk of neurological backlash…_

She screams, releasing the flare, and then everything goes white.

* * *

Her armored savior turns away from Liara. Even through the asari's blurry vision, the agony in the woman's movements is clear, but somehow, she stays on her feet. Purple energy crackles around her, and with a primal scream, a massive burst of biotic power flies from her hand, consuming the batarians. Liara shields her eyes from the flash and as her vision returns, she can see the warrior lying prostrate on the ground.

What little breath Liara has left dies in her throat, and with one pained step after another, she stumbles towards her rescuer. Though the battle still rages on, that goal is the only one she can think about. It's utterly impossible, and yet she knows it's true. Even before she reaches the woman's crumpled body, even before she pulls off her battered helmet, even before she sees the shock of red hair and the full lips caked in blood and hears her shallow breathing, Liara knows that it's Erin Shepard lying in front of her.

* * *

**And at last we've caught up to the prologue. I've been planning that scene since the beginning, and I hope it lived up to the build-up. Next Time: With Shepard unconscious and Liara badly injured, how will they survive the battle?**


	12. Chapter 12

_Human Designation: Erin Shepard injured. Significant biotic backlash affecting neural functions. Moderate damage to torso. Minor damage to jaw._

Cradling her lover's battered form in her arms, Liara T'Soni can't process what she's feeling nearly as easily as her senses are processing Erin's injuries. The terrible fact of Shepard's death has overshadowed all of her thoughts ever since the Crucible fired, and now, in an impossible moment, the Spectre has returned, saving Liara's life and nearly killing herself all over again. The information broker has no idea how this is even possible, any more than she understands why she can sense so much more about Shepard than anyone else she's encountered in the last few weeks.

Neither this miracle nor the mysteries surrounding it are going to mean anything if they both die in this desert however. Stifling the tears of relief and joy that threaten to overwhelm her, Liara wrenches her gaze away from her bondmate and assesses the situation. Shepard's desperate biotic outburst has created a little breathing space, but Liara needs to get them to the southern rallying point she was headed towards when the artillery hit before more of the enemy catches up with them.

The medi-gel Liara had applied minutes earlier is starting to take full effect, and though spikes of pain still shoot through her gut when she does, the information broker can force herself to her feet. Ignoring the throbbing in her bloody head, she summons her biotics, encasing Shepard in a field of purple energy, carrying her lover with her as she moves away from the front lines.

When her wrist begins to buzz, she almost doesn't notice, so preoccupied is she with getting Erin to safety, but when she sees the call is from Javik, she answers. He and the turian reinforcements she sent him to bring back are their last chance of turning the tide of battle.

"Doctor T'Soni." His voice is precise and cool. Even at the most dire moments, the prothean never loses his composure, and right now, her frayed emotions are glad for that calming influence.

"I am here."

"We are approximately ten minutes away from you position? Can you survive until then?"

"Yes," she replies, surprising herself with her certainty. For Shepard, she will hold as long as she has to. "Javik, you have to get here. Something has happened…" How can she explain this? Her voice cracks a little with the emotion she's trying to contain and she just adds, "Hurry. Please."

She's halfway up the southern ridge when the other asari find her, a ragged squad of commandos, bloody and injured, but still standing, just like her. She knows her people do not have the best reputation in as soldiers when it comes to battles such as this, but she is proud of the effort her outnumbered forces have made tonight.

"Liara!" A teal-skinned captain steps forward upon recognizing her through the gloom. "Thank the goddess you're alive. We heard your position was over-run. How did you make it out?"

"I almost did not." She levitates Shepard down gently while in the distance she can see the enemy closing in on them again. "I had help."

"Who is that? A human?"

"The woman who saved me." She can explain more later, perhaps when she understands herself. "The turians will be here soon. We have to hold out until they arrive." This is as good a place as any to make their stand, high ground that gives them a clear view of the approaching attack.

"Do you think we can?" The short, blue asari private sounds scarred, beaten down by all of the suffering they've gone through. Liara understands how she feels. To have fought so long and overcome so much, only to first lose Erin at the moment of victory and then have everything descend into bloodshed once more, had pushed her to the edge of giving up hope.

Not any more. This rescue, this spark of light cannot be allowed to flicker out. "Yes," she replies simply, steel in her voice, and purple energy enfolds her once more. She puts all the strength she can muster into a biotic dome and the other asari begin adding their power to it, forming a barrier that hopefully will keep them alive long enough for help to arrive.

They'll need it soon enough too, because in the distance Liara can see another wave of attackers chasing after the retreating asari. The krogan fill the air with guttural howls of rage, but it's the batarian riflemen who strike first, their fire slamming into the shield. It ripples but holds, and Liara grits her teeth, throwing more power into their defenses. She will not fail, and while she maintains the barrier, the other asari respond with a barrage of warps, shockwaves, and small arms fire, pushing the batarians towards cover.

The pressure on the shield easing slightly, Liara draws her pistol, putting a bullet through the top right eye of a batarian. Anger joins her determination as she fires. How dare they, she thinks, how dare these people try to ruin everything that the galaxy has suffered and bled for. They have already taken so many lives, but Liara will not let them have her bondmate.

The shield shudders as a rocket explodes against it's side and though the teal captain picks off the batarian holding the launcher with a burst of rifle fire, time is running out, the krogan infantry nearing their position. "Please," Liara whispers under her breath as their shotguns begin to try the strength of the barrier, "Get here soon." The dome begins to buckle, but it seems that for once, the universe has heard her prayers. Far above her, the sound of engines roars and in a moment both gruesome and wonderful, the onrushing krogan explode in a spray of blood and bone as the valley beneath Liara is engulfed in fire.

* * *

The turian gunships swoop in like angels of wrath, breaking over the ridge with a hail of missiles and canon blasts. The batarians and krogan beneath them are over-extended, having rushed out of regular formations in their zeal to chase down their enemies, and they're not prepared to repel the new attackers now ripping through their ranks.

From his position in the cockpit, Javik can see the turian ground forces following behind the aerial assault, trucks and men swarming down the ridge to defend the asari and secure the ground, but he will leave that to them; he has his own responsibility to attend to.

Locking on to the signal from Liara's omni-tool, he directs the pilot to put them down as close as she can to the asari's position. The air as he disembarks is filled with the familiar, acrid smell of burnt bodies and spent shells, but though he can see fleeing enemies in the distance, his attention is firmly on finding a single person.

This is not what he was trained to do. War, and especially war against the Reapers, demanded ruthless sacrifices from those waging it. No individual life mattered, only victory. This time though, he made a promise. He had asked Shepard to be with her in the final push, to give him the opportunity to take his revenge against the Reapers, and though she had agreed, she had demanded something of him in return.

"Liara needs to come with me," she had insisted. "But I need her to live. Whatever happens today, no matter what it takes, you have to keep her safe." He had sworn on the ghosts of his people that he would and he will not fail now. Shepard after all had given him his vengeance. Whatever else the consequences of what she did are, the Reapers are defeated and the soldier who accomplished that deserves to have her final request honored.

He finds Liara kneeling on the ground surrounded by a half-dozen or so other weary soldiers and when he calls out to her, the blue-skinned asari looks up. Her face is bloody, but when he looks in her bright eyes, he finds them full of hope. "Are you all right, Doctor?"

She smiles wearily. "I will be." He cannot remember the last time he saw her smile. Not since Shepard was lost, surely. And then, looking down, he sees her. Lying next to Liara is the battered form of the only warrior Javik has ever acknowledged as his better. Liara follows his gaze and her voice cracks. "I don't know how, Javik, but it's her."

It seems impossible, but impossible has become commonplace of late, and silently he kneels down next to the information broker and touches his thin grey hand to Shepard's cheek. Confusing flashes of memory and echoes of tangled emotion race through his head and when Liara looks at him quizzically, he explains, "I am not certain. It feels like it is Shepard, but there is something different about her as well."

The turian medics accompanying Javik have caught up to him and he motions for them to put both Liara and the unconscious human onto stretchers. The asari looks concerned but the only reassurance Javik can offer is that, "We will know more when she awakens." Liara nods and smiles weakly as she collapses into sleep, at last allowing fatigue and pain to catch up with her.

* * *

"Is she going to be all right?"

The battle is over for now, the batarians and krogan routed, but Liara's struggle is far from over. Standing in the makeshift field hospital, looking down at Shepard's unconscious form, she wishes that the overwhelmed turian doctor could give her some clearer answers.

"I'm not sure," he replies instead. "I've brought her fever down, but neurologically, it's anybody's guess. The amount of stress she put her system under… I don't have experience with biotics of that magnitude."

"I see." Liara nods, making herself sound calmer than she feels. Her own injuries have been treated, and while she's not exactly comfortable, the strain in her ribs is nothing compared to the confusion roiling her thoughts. "Please give us some privacy."

"Of course." The doctor withdraws, closing the thin curtain separating Shepard's cot from the other wounded. Liara doesn't know what to make of the beautiful human lying in front of her. When she first saw her on the battlefield, every instinct that she has had screamed that this was Erin Shepard. Not just the sense in her mind that identified her as such, but the way that she moved, that she fought, told Liara to believe. The mix of fluidity and ferocity is one that the asari saw in a hundred battles by Shepard's side and nowhere else; even the clone didn't carry herself in exactly the same way as this woman.

And yet, the body is different; Javik felt it and Liara could see it when they undressed her, peeling off her battered armor and replacing it with a thin hospital gown. Though the cybernetic surgery after the Lazarus Project had taken away her old scars, Shepard had already acquired new ones. The claw mark a dying Brute on Tchunka left across her ankle, the gash on her hip made by a Phantom's blade on Cronos Station: they're missing. She seems fresher somehow, her body unmarked by the hard life Shepard had lived.

"Is it you, my beloved?", she whispers to the sleeping woman. "Did you come back to me? You promised that…" Tears fill her eyes and she can only barely resist the urge to collapse, sobbing onto the woman's chest.

She can't do this. She can't stand here and not know. This woman's mind holds the answers Liara needs, and though it's damaged, she has to go in and find them. There's a possibility a meld could do further harm, but the opposite is also true: Liara has to trust that if this is her bondmate, she can help bring her back. Drying her eyes, she slips off her glove, and as she presses a gentle hand against the sleeping woman's forehead, darkness fills her blue eyes.

* * *

**Next Time: Liara journeys into Shepard's mind in an effort to give her aid and find answers.**


	13. Chapter 13

Liara has bonded with Erin many times before, but she's never experienced anything quite like this. Partly, that's a result of synthesis. She's heard from other asari over the last few weeks about the strangeness they've encountered while joining but, heartbroken over her beloved's death, she hasn't been willing to see it for herself, even in the context of a non-mating meld.

Lines of green light run through the mindscape that she finds herself in, data streams reminiscent of those Shepard encountered inside the Geth consensus. In the background, Liara can hear a calm, precise voice not that different from the mechanical one in her own head assessing this body's condition.

As much of a change as those things are though, they are neither unexpected nor what troubles the information broker right now. In place of the usual pleasant warmth of Shepard's mind, there's a feverish heat and all around her, she can see fragments of memory floating by, far more disorganized and chaotic than usual. Without warning, she finds herself being pulled into these echoes of the past...

…"How could you have done this, Erin?" Liara can see herself, standing in Shepard's cabin on the SR-2. The Spectre is sitting on the bed, looking away from her as she lashes out. "I thought that you loved me!"

Shepard struggles to find the words to reply, her normal self-confidence absent. "I do… I, I didn't mean for this to happen."

"You didn't mean to have sex with Ms. Chambers?", she snaps angrily, her skin flushing a darker blue.

"No, I…" There's a tear in the usually stoic Spectre's eye. "I thought you didn't care anymore. After Illium, when you wouldn't come with me, I thought you'd give up on us and I was so lonely."

"After everything that I did to bring you back, how could you think that?"

"I didn't know, Liara. I'm sorry. Please, I missed you and I'm so sorry."…

…Liara had forgiven her in the end. Shepard had not been wrong; the asari had not been clear about her feelings, and seeing how much Erin regretted what she'd done, Liara's anger softened. They had made up and made love, but that isn't what Erin is remembering now. It's the guilt and anger and as the memory fades, Liara doesn't understand why. She has seen Shepard's regrets before, and though she's now sure that these memories must belong to the woman she loves, she doesn't understand why she's so focused on them now…

…It's a gorgeous day on Virmire, the sun bright, the birds circling in the clear blue sky, but right then, it's hard to see anything but the huge krogan corpse lying there on the beach. Shepard looks down at the body that had once been Urdnot Wrex and shakes her head.

"He wouldn't listen to reason," she sighs to Ashley, the Spectre sounding far older than her years. Liara can see her past self looking on with distress, shocked by the violence between crew members and at the same time fighting the urge to throw her arms around a human that she has already begun to care about…

…The memory fades again and Liara finds herself back in the wilds of Shepard's mind, the sound of gunfire and the harsh metallic scent of blood from some unseen battle only adding to the sense of disorientation that she's feeling.

"Erin!", she calls out. "Where are you?" There's no response from the human though, only the renewed onslaught of more of the moments that eat at her lover…

…Liara can see herself and EDI standing next to Shepard on the Citadel, their guns drawn. But their weapons aren't trained on a Geth or a Husk. Instead, it's Kaiden Alenko facing them. Liara can't believe it's come to this. Certainly, the Major had had harsh words back on Mars for Erin about her association with Cerberus, but can he really think that she's a traitor? For a moment, as Shepard pleads with him to put down his gun and Kaiden refuses, Liara feels like this is happening right now. She hopes that there's still some way that she can prevent this tragedy, but she's not even there, just an observer watching the scene play out to it's bitter, inevitable conclusion.

Erin's gun wavers, the memory of Virmire giving her pause, even as Udina continues his efforts to open the lift doors. Before he can loose the Cerberus assassins on them, though, EDI's pistol flashes, and Kaiden falls, a hole in his chest. Just for an instant, Liara can see her lover's iron composure waver, pain flashing across it, as the Major breathes regret with his last words…

…The scene fades again and Liara looks around desperately, trying to find her bondmate, to get in touch with the core of her mind and not these shadows. "Erin! Why are you doing this to yourself? I know you have made mistakes, but you have done so much good. You saved all of us from the Reapers…"

…Liara can't figure out what she's looking at, not at first. The place reminds her of the Citadel, but not a part of it that she's ever been to. Then, through a huge picture window, she sees the main gun of a Reaper destroyer ripping through the hull of a turian dreadnought, and she realizes this must be Earth during the final battle.

Her eyes are swiftly drawn away from the distant conflict by a more present sight. Staggering across the metal floor of this vast and strange chamber is Shepard. Her bondmate looks worse than at any time since her resurrection. Her armor is a ruin, her body battered, her face caked with blood. Liara tries to call out to her, but there's still no sign that she can be heard.

A luminous form is talking to Shepard, a light in the shape of a small human male. "You have hope. More than you think," its telling her, its voice otherworldly and strange. It explains that she has somehow ,"Altered the variables," and that she has to find a new solution to the war between organics and synthetics.

"It is now in your power to destroy us," it informs her and Liara's mind starts to race. Erin had the power to destroy the Reapers outright, to pick some outcome other than synthesis? Ever since the Crucible fired, everyone has been operating on the assumption that this was it's only function. What were Shepard's other choices?

"But others will be destroyed as well. The Crucible will not discriminate. All synthetics will be targeted." The Geth. She can see Shepard's face fall. The commander had been so proud of making that peace on Rannoch, especially after the disaster with krogan, of finding a way to end the conflict rather than just killing one side or the other.

"There has to be another way," Erin rasps, her every breath clearly an agony.

"You could instead use the energy of the Crucible to seize control of the Reapers," the glowing child offers. Shepard doesn't seem interested. Liara knows that her lover doubts her own judgment too much to want that kind of power .

"There is another solution," it says, its artificial voice surprisingly soft. "Synthesis." The choice she made. But what did she think would happen?

"And what the hell is that?", Erin asks, clearly desperate to find some way to end this war that doesn't involve more bloodshed.

"Add your energy to the Crucible. The chain reaction will combine all synthetic and organic life into a new framework… a new DNA."

"I don't know." She looks overwhelmed, pain and the magnitude of the decision weighing on her heavily, and Liara desperately wishes that she could have been by her side when she had to make it.

The child continues on, espousing the virtues of synthesis, telling Shepard that, "The cycle will end. The Reapers will cease their harvest, and the civilizations preserved in their forms will be connected to all of us. Synthesis is the final evolution of all life." Liara's confusion only deepens. The Reapers are shattered wrecks now, not new friends sharing the accumulated wisdom of the past.

The being then tells her that she will have to chose, but Liara can tell that Shepard has already made her decision, unwilling to kill the Geth or trust herself to seize such power. Her lover stumbles forward towards the beam of light at the center of the room and the asari's eyes fill with tears of pride as well as sadness. Erin was going to sacrifice herself, to give up everything for the sake of life and peace.

But wait. Her rational brain halts her emotions in their tracks. If Shepard died on the Citadel, then how is it possible that she here now? She is though; there's no one else who's mind this could be; the memories and the emotions behind them have to belong to her bondmate. Shepard staggers towards the beam and just before she reaches it, she whispers, "I'm sorry, Liara. I love you, but I have to do this."

Shepard jumps and the light expands, so bright that the asari can see nothing else. When her eyes clear, the bizarre room and the child are gone. There is only darkness now, a featureless space empty save for one thing: Erin, crouched over, clad in the shredded Alliance uniform she wore in the earlier memory. "What have I done?", she demands of herself. "It wasn't supposed to be like this…"

Liara steps out of the blackness, at last able to enter the scene instead of just observing, and kneels next to the woman she loves. "Shepard. What is it? Talk to me."

"Liara," she sobs. "I did this for you. I… I wanted you to be safe. To make a galaxy you could be safe in. Instead, I've killed you."

At last Liara understands. Shepard doesn't know she survived the battle. The Spectre thinks that her choice didn't just fail to bring peace but that it led to the death of her lover, and that the woman she's speaking to now is just another phantom out of her memories.

Liara tries to comfort her, stammering out, "You, you didn't, Erin. It's really me. I am here."

Shepard doesn't seem to hear her though, too lost in her guilt. "The final evolution of life? What a joke! We're killing each other again, the same as always. And me? What kind of a freak am I?" Shared memories flash through Liara's mind, of Shepard awakening in a glass tank, of a row of identical bodies, of the insignia of Cerberus on a bloody uniform. "A fucking clone?!", she screams before her voice drops, filled with pain and despair. "A clone and a failure. I've failed you, the crew, the galaxy…"

Cracks start to appear in the void around them, and Liara can feel Shepard's mind starting to fracture. She has no idea what this strain is doing to Erin already over-taxed body but she has to put a stop to it. Desperately, she reaches out to her bondmate, and grabbing her head in her hands, kisses her hard.

Even as their lips meet, Liara strengthens the meld, diving as deep as she can into Shepard's mind. She tries to reach past the guilt and the anger, searching for the hero beneath them, the woman who never gave up even in the darkest moments of the Reaper War. "Shepard." She puts all the conviction she can muster into her voice, pressing on her the certainty that this is Liara speaking to her and not some dream. "You are not a clone and you didn't fail me. I don't know how it's possible, but you are real. You came back and the galaxy still needs you." Her voice softens. "I still need you."

* * *

"Liara!" Erin jolts awake, crying out her bondmate's name as her green eyes fly open.

"I'm here." Above her, she can see Liara, alive and whole, a smile breaking out across her beautiful face as she leans down to embrace the Spectre.

Shepard throws her arms around the asari's waist, tears in her eyes. "You found me," she manages. "You saved me."

A tender hand strokes her rumpled red hair, and Liara whispers, "You saved me first."

* * *

**And that brings to an end the first arc of the story. Don't worry, it's far from over, but the pace of posting may slow down for a bit as I finish up the current plot in 4****th**** Life and work on a few other project, both on FF and in real life. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank sherryE, wyles77, and metaladdict for all their reviews, as well as everyone else who's reviewed, faved and followed this story; it's excellent motivation for me to keep writing. Next Time: Urdnot Wreav gets some bad news and takes steps to improve morale.**


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